JACOB'S ROOM 61

text-books. Listless is the air in an empty room,
just swelling the curtain ; the flowers in the jar
shift. One fibre in the wicker arm-chair creaks,
though no one sits there.

Coming down the steps a little sideways
[Jacob sat on the window-seat talking to Durrant;
he smoked, and Durrant looked at the map],
the old man, with his hands locked behind him,
his gown floating black, lurched, unsteadily, near
the wall; then, upstairs he went into his room.
Then another, who raised his hand and praised
the columns, the gate, the sky ; another, tripping
and smug. Each went up a staircase ; three
lights were lit in the dark windows.

If any light burns above Cambridge, it must
be from three such rooms ; Greek burns'here ;
science there ; philosophy on the ground floor.
Poor old Huxtable can't walk straight ;—Sop-
with, too, has praised the sky any night these
twenty years ; and Cowan still chuckles at the
same stories. It is not simple, or pure, or wholly
splendid, the lamp of learning, since if you see
them there under its light (whether Rossetti's on
the wall, or Van Goch reproduced, whether